


The Human Strain

by orphan_account



Series: The Human Emotion [2]
Category: Warcraft (2016)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Developing Sexuality, Dubious Science, Ethics, Fluff, Interstellar travel, M/M, The Future, Whump, gryphon master lothar, relativity theory, space, space troopers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7860052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ripples of what they are doing extend everywhere.</p><p>Liaisons between an AI and a man. It is unheard of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Strain

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the lovely [mia826](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mia826). Thanks so much for giving up your precious sleep for this!
> 
> This part might not have happened without [Genuinelies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Genuinelies/pseuds/Genuinelies). This one is on you.

Winter, the way Lothar remembers it, never really comes to the Geneva Station.

There are zones around the polar extremities where temperatures drop below zero. The equatorial range certainly has a subtropical climate unbearable during the hottest hour of the day. But as days on Geneva are only half the duration of those on Earth, the snow and the cold wind have no time to really pick up to that terminal point where he has to wear an extra layer over his winter uniform for insulation.

But Khadgar isn't encumbered by even that.

Khadgar, Lothar thinks as he idly warms his hands with a saline heating pack against his palms, would be fine in one of his indigo summer tunics, so very old-fashioned that it only adds to his charm. Down here in the snow, the tips of his fingers would glow a warm orange. His eyes would be blue, his breath permanently visible in little puffs as he blows out hot air. His skin would be warm and welcoming to the touch.

“How is your schedule?” the voice in the box asks again over the static in his ear.

“Still three days, I think,” laughs Lothar. He squints at the black star-specked sky, the spreading landscape giving him nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. Green light dances in the sky. It is not the real thing, on this manmade station that exists light years away from its base model and the original North Pole, but he describes the phenomenon to Khadgar as if it is.

Lothar understands Khadgar's impatience more than enough. “We haven't reached Base Camp,” he says. “After that, we spend one day in orbit, getting the men up in zero gravity, and _then_ I come home.” His eyes trace the moving speck in the night sky, too big and too bright to be a star. “You're sure you can't come down for a minute or two?”

“The speed necessary for a roundtrip like that would crash me into the station's core.” Khadgar doesn't take a second to think. Facts like these come natural to him.

“On second thought.”

As the rest of his unit starts packing up for the final ascent to the peak of the Montes Nivis, Lothar muses how, for all their progress, humanity has never managed putting atomic bonds back together. Caught in an arctic calm with the man he yearns to see so relatively close, Lothar would give much for short-distance teleportation.

Miles up in the atmosphere, Khadgar reminds him softly, “Three days.”

The connection ends. Above Lothar, the Atrophic Space Program's rehabilitation terminal continues on its course through the sky. It will deliver the voice he has become so fond of back to solid ground a day ahead of his own scheduled return home. For now, his struggling unit needs him.

He is the only surviving soldier from Earth with over three centennia of service behind his name. The rough way of the Geneva army resonates within him in a way that the abundant nightlife or the many beautiful sceneries on this world can't. It started out as a volunteer job, after he needed something on his hands. Now he is their commander. And so he reaches for his weighty backpack and hoists it up.

The snow is picking up into what might turn into a blizzard; the pole does not intend to be conquered today. And Lothar relishes in the challenge.

* * *

“Tell me why you still work for them.”

A calloused hand traces the dip of Khadgar's back. Lothar earns himself a languid stretch before the man rolls onto his stomach on top of him, his eyes alight as he leans his chin on Lothar's clavicle and hums. He is as warm as Lothar remembers him, his hips slotted loosely between Lothar's legs and looking utterly lazy. “What, the ASP?”

“They think they own you.”

“Well, they made me,” says Khadgar. His body is pliant, but his thoughts do not yield. They never do. “I wouldn't know where to start. And it doesn't feel right.”

He traces a finger down Lothar's jaw. It is easy to become distracted. When they first met, the space soldier and the Advanced Genetic Intelligence program who was tasked with escorting him down to Geneva, they talked over the radio or at a safe physical distance. But Khadgar is not embarrassed about his body. It is likely that he never learnt to, and as a result they end up more and more frequently talking like this, dressed down to their underwear, with Lothar trying to hold onto his self-restraint while Khadgar lays his head on his chest and speaks of everything and nothing.

It would be a tease, if he was human. But Lothar has had him panting many times, and never once has Khadgar gotten hard. Their markup might not be so similar. That bothers Khadgar enough for Lothar not to remind him of it, too.

Lothar closes his eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“At this moment?”

Lothar chuckles. “In general, kid. But tell me both, and I shall see what I can do for you.”

Khadgar's warmth radiates pleasantly. Becoming adept at reading him, Lothar asserts having flustered the man. “I don't know.”

“You used to know. You said you wanted to visit libraries. You wanted to study ethics, I believe, and biology.”

“It's different when they threaten to become actual plans,” admits Khadgar. “I do study your biology whenever I can.” And then there is nothing Lothar can do, all his defences blown with one spot-on remark, while the man continues like he doesn't have a clue, “I like your biology.”

If Lothar sounds breathless, it is not his own fault. “Haven't you wanted to be something when you were young? Didn't you have dreams?”

Now Khadgar frowns. “I've always known my purpose.”

“Yes. But is it what you wanted?”

Obviously, it is not. Every time he is on location at the terminal for weeks or months on end, Khadgar complains how very bored he is. He has finished the operation manuals at some point, and claimed to only have gotten dumber from them, even though it was better than not having anything to do at all. The Atrophic Space Program don't expect him to do anything other than study or rest in his downtime.

They also don't like it when their asset instead spends that time calling out to the same number in the capital, getting attached to a factor they can't control, nor how content and mildly distracted he is for the rest of the day when he does.

“Can we not talk about this?” asks Khadgar. He sounds on edge.

The ASP treats him poorly. They push his working hours, and they think they can demand whatever they want from Khadgar. But they are his origin. His roots. Aside from the occasional external expert or his clients, the team that developed him make up his family.

“All right,” Lothar concedes with a nod of his head. The old teak bed in the only wooden house in the city creaks in the early hours of morning when he turns them both over, and kisses him until Khadgar has forgotten about the original topic.

Small red marks are scattered along the previously pale skin of his neck—Lothar has discovered early on that it turns the man into a mess when he kisses him there; more so when he uses teeth—and Khadgar rolls up his hips out of instinct.

“I love you,” Lothar murmurs against his ear.

“What does that mean?” Khadgar breathes hard.

“Should I show you?” challenges Lothar.

And the other man nods enthusiastically.

They spend all of their first day back together in bed. Twelve hours on Earth go by in which they rarely get up, if only to carry food back to the bedroom. They kiss for at least a quarter of that time, until Khadgar mentions with surprise that his lips have become raw. Draped over each other, lazy enough to nearly fall asleep, they catch up on what they have both missed as they listen to music from three centuries back.

So it almost goes past Lothar when a sequence of lights alights from under the skin of Khadgar's neck. He frequently sees indicators appear under his fingertips, and there are a few on his lower back and abdomen that come to life Lothar is doing something particularly good to him. It goes without saying that he has lights elsewhere too. It is just that these are blinking, faster and faster, irregular now, and that Khadgar responds like they are new to him too.

His hand gingerly touches the spot. Khadgar's eyes are confused. “Lothar?”

From one moment to the next, Khadgar's eyes roll up. Then, with a whimper, he crumples and goes down.

His skin becomes a map of red lights.

* * *

Hospitals on Geneva are impossible to locate.

At some point, Lothar wonders if they even exist. There might be a few medical units, hidden behind the grand chains of drugstores selling popular and affordable prevention supplements for anything from the common cold to what he suspects even old age. For major injuries, there are unmanned patch-up points throughout the city. But none of those would suffice for Khadgar, and Lothar has spent precious minutes searching desperately for a way to get an ambulance. So he sticks to what he knows.

The doors of the barracks slide open before him. The hour is still early when he carries the limp body into the med bay, the compound quiet, but he is glad that three members of staff crowd around him at once.

“Commander?” one asks as she regards the man in his arms. She flinches at the ASP logo on Khadgar's wrist, the one that is also etched into every door and should by rights not startle her. Except it does, and Lothar understands why. The ASP has several programs of androids and advanced hybrids; whichever category Khadgar belongs to, it makes him extremely valuable. One of a kind. For one to be carried into the med bay as unresponsive as this, with red warning signs flashing all over his skin, spells trouble. “What is going on?”

“Can you fix him?” Lothar asks. He looks harried where these people have never seen him lose composure. “He just,” _fell? Shut down?_ Something is amiss, and he knows not where to start. Lothar has not often been so painfully reminded that Khadgar is, in his origin, artificial. But at least he breathes. “I don't know what is wrong. Can you help him?”

This is beyond her knowledge, but she nods. “Let me make some calls. I am sure someone can. For now, put him in a bay to keep him stable.”

And so Lothar follows her command. He bites his nails as he prowls the space in front of the room. Except for the sheets that Lothar has wrapped around him, Khadgar is still barely dressed. There was no time for that. The marks against his neck stand out against the white, and his lips are on the side of swollen. His appearance is bound to raise questions.

Behind him, the door opens again with the hiss of hydraulics. They do not close.

When he turns, a small team waits for him. At first glance, they appear to be a mishmash of staff on call and closeby enough to make it here this fast. The group seem however awfully composed. Expectant. Awake. And the sight of Khadgar unconscious clearly does not really disturb them.

A man in a white officer's uniform nods at the man. “Did you bring him?”

Frayed, Lothar nods. “Can you help him?”

“Don't worry. We will take it from here,” says the officer. “Thank you for returning Khadgar to us, Commander Lothar.” He confers with one of the men next to him and gestures. But when he looks back, he folds his hands in front of him.

Lothar stares between them and Khadgar. Is that it? Despite how deeply this concerns him, they will not even examine him? It is as if—his defences draw up—it is as if they know exactly what is going on. Lothar raises himself to his full height. “What do you intend to do with him?”

“Oh, there is nothing to worry about,” says the man. He smiles kindly, and it is calculated. “Khadgar is fine. A failsafe was triggered. He is in what we call his safe mode right now. We only need to lift the block.”

They built in a way of shutting Khadgar down.

A rational voice tells Lothar that it would be unwise not to, when he understands the dangers of artificial intelligence from his own time, back when society already feared a technological singularity. That point where an intelligence becomes so smart that a chain of self-improvements lead to it surpassing mankind and inevitably making it obsolete. History books from his rehabilitation period in the terminal have taught Lothar about incidents in the past, two that nearly got that far, before humanity understood that creating an AI with an only slightly more advanced capacity for thought and a number of mortal limitations would be safer for all of them. But this is Khadgar. “Well?”

“Sir?”

“Well, don't wait for me.”

The man shifts awkwardly. “Commander Lothar, I can't—I am not authorised for that.”

“Whose signature do you need?” asks Lothar. He will arrange it. He will.

“Sir…”

It does not take a fool to see that they do not want him here. Khadgar is their concern, and Lothar is merely the obstruction that stands in their way. But Lothar needs to see Khadgar wake. He does not trust these men, especially after how casually they regard the still form in the med bay.

Lothar tilts his head. Their unwillingness to do something is starting to aggravate him. “How exactly will you proceed?”

“We will determine whether he is intact,” says the officer. “When we know it is safe to, we shall remove the block. Then we start the treatment.”

Treatment. Something about that word raises the hairs on Lothar's neck. “How is his failsafe triggered?” he demands to know instead. “I was with him. Nothing happened. Khadgar was fine.”

The room is clinical and cold. Khadgar is the only source of warmth, and Lothar suddenly wishes never to have taken him here. He has made an error. He wants to take Khadgar back with him and find some back alley specialist with the knowhow to get him back. But he also knows the team that stands in front of him will not let him.

“You were there?”

Lothar groans. “Enough. Can someone please tell me what is going on? Yes, I was with him!”

“…I am going to have to ask you to leave now, Commander Lothar,” says the man. Something cold flickers in his expression. “It is for your own good. We truly appreciate your cooperation, but I assure you, we can handle it from here.”

The mood shifts until it comes to a standstill.

Lothar heads into the room with big strides and picks up Khadgar's prone form.

An alarm goes off overhead.

“Sir,” says another, “you can't take him.”

“Says who?”

None of them dare to come closer. The red lights overhead match those in Khadgar's lifeless form. Lothar's reputation precedes him, both as the soldier from Earth and as the commander of the best garrison in the city. But they do not have to, Lothar finds out, when he turns around with Khadgar in his arms and comes face to face with a squad of security men.

He used to work for them. The ASP. He has dedicated his life to serve them, fought several wars on different worlds, but he is little more a trophy since his retirement from space. They can strip his rank from him. He has nothing. So Lothar does the only thing he thinks might still save Khadgar from whatever it is that his treatment is going to be. He punches in a few commands on the com device on the wall and waits. What he does will have monumental consequences.

“This is Commander Anduin Lothar of the Sixty-Seventh Regiment,” Lothar says with a shaking voice. “I would like to bring to your attention a breach of ethics regulations.”

* * *

They don't let him see him.

They don't let them speak, and he hasn't heard his voice in weeks.

Lothar lies in his unmade bed upside down, staring at the ceiling. The radio tries once again to connect to Khadgar's number. By now he knows not to expect an answer. It does not change that every time the connection switches to voicemail, he feels worse for it.

The first hearing is set minutes from now. Lothar has money enough to afford a good lawyer, but the good woman had traitorously suggested not to make an appearance on the first date, as if she did not trust Lothar to control himself. And so he is here, in an bed with too many memories.

The soft hum of ale courses through his blood and keeps him warm. Under the third dial is a direct connection to the woman set to represent him.

Volumes of documentation on his drive about the matter still await his attention. He has been reading Khadgar's extensive research for days, but his work is thorough. Will he be represented, Lothar wonders. Can he speak, and address all of the material on the screen above Lothar's head in his own defence? Or is he going to be little more than a puppet in a tug-of-war?

Lothar bites his lip when the feed crackles. He closes his eyes.

It begins.

* * *

When the hearing ends, the clock indicates that night has fallen.

It might as well be day.

Unlike the press frenzies of old, with their many limitations, bright daylight from powerful lights flood in through the windows from the garden outside. A flock of reporters awaits Lothar's commentary and a chance to snap his picture, the noise swelling in intensity over the next hour while he continues to remain absent. The future, Lothar finds, does not mess around.

The trial is no longer a concern of the ethics board alone. The newspapers have picked up on it, and the media are eagerly blowing the case out of proportion. Liaisons between an AI and a man. It is a nightmare.

Still in his bed, Lothar remembers the feed.

“A failsafe for what?” his lawyer had argued. “My client has told me that nothing was going on at the time when he shut down.”

The ASP's representative had paused. Her voice had been cold and deliberate, and followed by a rumour that had been hard to quiet down. “Sexual assault.”

“Sexual—”

That needed time to sink in.

The defence had not stopped there, every word a battering that threatened to bring Lothar to his knees. “Abuse of a program that does not know any better, as you well know, is a serious offense. We have found bite marks on his neck, several other indications, and he had been undressed when brought in.”

Lothar still does not know what to say. The words are as ridiculous as they are offensive. To even suggest that Lothar would do something like that, that anyone could do that to Khadgar, churns his stomach. But the greater implication is worse. They are using evidence that Lothar can not refute—much as Khadgar has consented, Lothar does not once hear Khadgar's voice over the feed—to express their request to transfer him elsewhere. The ASP are fighting to bring him to a facility light years away on a different station, where he and Lothar will live different timelines and Khadgar will be safe from his offender's influence.

Lothar may never hear his lovely voice again; Khadgar, Khadgar will never live the life he is entitled to have.

Lothar does not step outside that day. His lawyer, a scruffy young woman with green skin and a fierceness that makes him glad she is on his side, orders him food when the press dissipates for long enough to let the delivery boy through.

Lothar is told that which the news has already shown him. The hearing has been a spectacle of representatives throwing mud. Khadgar was not there.

* * *

After a few more days, Lothar is sick of it. No formal accusations have been made against him, but whenever he needs to go outside for much of anything, people stare after him. Once or twice, children unapologetically ask him what is wrong with him. Across the counter where he is to pick up his prescriptions, the apothecarist mutters something about morals these days.

Lothar is tired. He petitions publicly to visit Khadgar. As his audience is all of Geneva, and the people have become hooked to anything that is new in the scandal that rocks the city, Lothar steps outside and bluntly uses the interest in a good story to answer every and any of the reporters' questions as honestly as he can. At the end of the day, every news station knows that Lothar wants to see him.

Needless to say, his representative is furious. But that lasts only until the next morning, when the news shows hidden footage obtained with great difficulty. One of the reporters has managed to find Khadgar's whereabouts and snuck in.

On the screen, Khadgar is awake. He is resting in some sort of padded fitting in a brightly lit facility that Lothar does not recognise. Although he wears his tunic, it hangs off his shoulder. His eyes are lifeless. The marks on his neck have healed, and he looks healthy enough, but there is no joy to be found as he sits hooked to an IV as well as numerous cables. There are bags under his eyes. In only weeks, he has become a shadow of his former self.

Of course, seeing him like that only makes it worse. Lothar is powerless. The ASP may be prevented for now from moving him to a different location, but evidently they can still proceed with what are undoubtedly their corrections.

And then there is the public. Khadgar is shown as unresponsive, a body without a mind. Lothar becomes that person who was able to look at a miserable, mindless creature like this and decided to use him for the sake of satisfying his own depravities.

The ripples extend everywhere. On the training grounds, his soldiers keep staring at him and whispering behind his back until Lothar is strongly encouraged by his superiors to take a leave of absence. The gryphon stables ask him not to do volunteer work with them for a while. They know Khadgar; they have talked to him. They know he is not the shadow he looks on television; they simply have their orders.

But then the radio crackles into life, the night before the first trial where they will both have to be present, and the voice that comes through is worth everything. “Lothar?”

Having spent his days in bed in misery, Lothar first does not know how to process it. “Khadgar?” It is a trick of his mind, he tells himself. Someone is manipulating him. Except he _hears_ the relief, the familiar licking of the boy's lips. “Is that—?”

“It's me,” says the familiar voice. “I don't have much time. I'm—I'm resisting it, as much as I can. Please be there tomorrow. Trust me. I,” Khadgar breathes out, “I miss you.”

Before he gets another word in, the connection ends. Lothar checks his history and finds no record of their conversation. But he is not stupid. And Khadgar, he thinks, Khadgar is yet unbroken, pushing himself far beyond his limits. Lothar finds himself hopeful as his mind goes over millions of possibilities.

A video transmission announces itself with a ding. Absently, Lothar accepts, thinking it to be his legal representative.

What he finds instead is a recording without a sender. It is one that is programmed to be seen only once. His system can't pause it or save it; it can barely manage the amount of metadata, and Lothar's only months old state-of-the-art screen that Khadgar insisted on and hand-picked for him has trouble coping with the frame rate. Still, he can make out a camera moving around a place he recognises. The Gilded Rose. Spring. Crowds disperse on both sides of the screen. Some people stop to look and are ignored. The footage blacks out at regular intervals.

There is a giddiness to the way the image moves. It is almost as if Lothar is inside the cameraman's head. Details around the edges of the frame blur. Like the faces of most strangers, they are not important. But the middle of the bar is in crisp detail and perfect focus. There, Lothar watches himself raising a glass.

The camera hides. It shifts, unsteadily, like the person behind it is nervous. A stranger rests his hand on the person's shoulder; his face is more detailed than most, and yet Lothar can't recall what he looked like when he disappears.

The room pivots until it stops at the large wall of aluminium glass. Lothar sees Khadgar, smiling at his own reflection. The man bites his lip, looking for all the world like a boy fallen in love for the first time, and closes his eyes.

The image blinks again. There is no visible recorder device that Lothar can tell. Then Khadgar's finger reaches up to his temple. The screen is distorted with artefacts for a second, before it goes black.

For a long time after, Lothar is left processing what he has seen. There is no mistaking the subject though. It is the night they met.

A couple of new emails await his attention. Night is passing, the trial approaching. Soon there will be only minutes left. When he finally snaps out of his stupor, still overwhelmed, finds himself with purpose. He opens his messages and finds, among the mundane feeds, another few videos.

 _Show these_ , says the label, sender unknown.

For the first time in weeks, Lothar feels like they have a plan.

* * *

For the humble room meant to contain only a few hundred guests at the most, the small court is packed with people. The noise levels are impossible to block out. Even the board has trouble keeping its many attendants in check.

There has not been a real trial in Geneva for decades. Now it has one involving a manmade _creature_ —Lothar finds that they all have trouble classifying Khadgar, and he has been called any objectification between a robot, a hybrid, and worse—and a man born light years away. The people hang onto every detail.

They call Lothar many things. He can keep his chin up, but that does not protect him from how the accusations hit home. And Khadgar, who sits in the stand in the middle like a prize, has not looked at him once.

“All rise,” the chairman says, rusty. They do, and then they all sit again. They must have found the custom in a manual but failed to understand what it was for; the once deferential gesture has become ritualistic and empty.

The chairman summarises the case. He welcomes all involved parties. Then he raises a hand to the defence.

A willowy woman steps forward. Her ears are long, her eyes glowing. Her skin is spotted and scaly down her spine where it disappears behind immaculate tweed. She is assisted by a team of five, and the client she represents is an old man, who looks uneasy to be here too. “The original complaint, as brought up by Commander Lothar,” she says, in the local tongue that Lothar by now understands well enough, “is unethical treatment. Today you see before you the object of this alleged breach in conduct. Khadgar is the product of many improvements in our line of research. His origin traces back to one of our very first projects. You know her as the one who unfortunately brought about the First War.”

The war that started shortly after Lothar took his first jump; the First War is remembered as the bloodiest.

“We have come a long way since,” she says. “We have learned to be careful when it comes to machines. We no longer strive for the impossible, knowing that the impossible might be our downfall. So we started developing prototypes with more and more limitations. Mortality,” she points out, “led eventually to the model sitting before you. Khadgar's program is the most successful of our endeavours so far. But even though he is made up much like you and I, he is not the same.”

Stepping up to him, she touches his temple in a specific order. Khadgar blinks and stares up at her. Under his skin, visible from under his white robes, flash paths of light. “Controllable,” she says, “if you know how to operate him. And in need, I assure you, of each of his inhibitors.” Into her handheld she issues another command and, standing next to him as she illustrates her point to the court room with a steely face, she presses enter.

Khadgar whimpers in pleasure.

Lothar wants to rush up to him and take him away. He wants to punch her for what boundaries she breaches. There is bile in the back of his throat. The ASP overstep their boundaries to make a point, and that point is no longer whether Khadgar is human or not. They meant to discredit him. To make what is between them a travesty is their surest way to control. Lothar is forced to watch as she lets Khadgar hang on for long seconds. When the first people of the audience begin to shift uncomfortably, she stops.

“He looks like he is human,” she says. “He is not.”

Lothar bites back his tears against the palms of his hands.

His representative draws his arms down. _Let them see,_ she seems to say.

“This isn't him,” hisses Lothar. “I do not know what they did to him. I have never known—I didn't take advantage of him. I would never.”

“Do you want to continue?”

Lothar nods.

He looks down at his rough hands as his representative stands to his defence. Now that their roles are reversed, it is up to her to save his skin. She passes on a command, and the first video from his inbox starts to play on the large screen overhead.

Khadgar, on it, is Khadgar. The image is grainy and a bit rough, but it is more real than the flesh and blood version that sits drugged in front of the people.

“Hi,” says the cheerful boy from his seat in the ASP terminal. There are interfaces upon interfaces surrounding him, switchboards with a complexity that is child's play to him. He speaks old English; a live subtitle track accompanies the video. “Today is September 5, 2440. I don't usually record this, but I feel like maybe this time I should. In a few hours,” the camera moves clumsily until it captures space in all its blackness and empty glory, “that is where my client is going to be. He thinks I am a voice in a box now. That is what he says. I wonder if they will let me see him. He's really old, and he can get terribly grumpy when he thinks he is alone, but I guess, well, I guess I like talking to him.”

There is a lightness in his voice. Younger than he is now. The contrast with the empty shell that sits in the court room is jarring. Khadgar on screen is a young man who is full of life. He laughs and talks to himself, and he scratches himself behind his ears when he doesn't know what to say.

To the willowy woman behind her manila folders, the material is unanticipated. She converses in hushed voices with the team around her in the corner of Lothar's eye.

Lothar nods with red-rimmed eyes. “That's enough,” he tells the green woman next to him. “I do not want to show the others.”

“The one in Goldshire—”

He firmly shakes his head once more. “Enough. They are memories, not exhibits.”

Behind him, several reporters begin writing furiously. Lothar would smile, if that was his intent. It is not. Some of the other videos contain footage of them together. Although none show anything inappropriate, they still feel wrong after how easily Khadgar appears to be manipulated. After the allegations. Lothar inclines his head. “Not today.”

But from the audience swells a noise. Gasps, and whispers, until the video ends, the audio track cut off, and half of the people in the room stand on their toes to lean forward.

Khadgar is crying.

He does not move. His stillness remains undisturbed, to the point where Lothar worries that he is physically obstructed to move. But the tears are as unmistakable as the way Khadgar fights not to show them. The creature none of them have a label for is hurt.

“Khadgar…” Lothar whispers.

Khadgar turns to him. “Anduin.” Lothar is reminded of that night when he said he wanted to know how it felt to be human. That once in a while, he would want to cry too. Lothar no longer wants him to. Not when he can't do anything to make it better.

No word improves the silence. “Hang in there,” he whispers. It feels hollow.

Khadgar tries a smile. “I do my best.”

There are but yards between them. Lothar screws his eyes shut and swallows. Nobody has said it would be easy. When he opens his eyes, his jaw is set and his eyes angry. “Sir,” he addresses the chairman directly, bypassing the woman who rolls her eyes from his side, like she is used to this by now. “I request that Khadgar be placed with an independent party until the end of the trial. I fear for his health and his sanity. It is not an unreasonable thing to ask.”

“He can't be unsupervised,” the old man on the other side speaks up before his representative can hush him too. “You've seen—”

“Then send someone in for extreme emergencies,” says Lothar coldly. “There is a conflict of interest here, and this cannot be a fair trial unless we deal with it.”

“A conflict of interest! Have you any idea what you've done when you started to meddle? Khadgar was perfect before you! And you had to—you had to—”

Lothar's representative leans in when the defensiveness in the old man confuses him. “His creator,” she whispers. “Khadgar's father, if you will.”

“You used him!” spits the man bitterly. Khadgar is now turned to him. In his eyes, Lothar reads sorrow.

The chairman acknowledges Lothar request, and the case is adjourned.

When he leaves court, he feels drained. Anyone who talks to him is ignored, just as he dismisses the ASP representative who sends a message in the shuttle back home about whether they can talk.

* * *

If Geneva's media outlets explode in the days that follow, Lothar would not know it. He borrows a gryphon from the stables with a plea they could not deny him and leaves his home to go far from civilisation.

Geneva feels as meaningless as when he first set foot on it, when he had no purpose and when he searched desperately for something to do. And although Lothar has somewhat gotten used to the life and the many advantages, he yearns for the simple experience of walking a forest floor barefoot, of killing his own food and picking his own fruits. The world would think him barbarous; they are eager to forget that on many occasions during his missions, knowing how to survive in uncharted territory was what kept him and his peers alive. He might go so far as to say that it was half of the effort that helped them win the war.

As it is the future, he supposes, there is no such thing as bad reception. Lothar is wading through a lake, his bird undignified on a leash behind him, when his phone rings.

“Yes?” he blinks.

“No,” the angry voice fires back. “You've been missing for days! Where the fuck are you?”

The swearing is archaic and surprisingly fluent, and he loves it instantly. “Hey.”

“No, don't you ‘hey' me. Where are you? What are you thinking? Geneva has gone mad and you just decided t—is that water? Are you—please tell me you're not fishing.”

“How are you doing, Khadgar?” Lothar asks fondly. The way they talk, it is easy to forget about everything else that is going on.

“Well. Better. They don't shoot me up with hormones anymore. I can actually think straight. But if you think you can just change the subject, Anduin, you've got another thing coming.”

“I needed to get away,” says Lothar earnestly. “I am sorry if I worried you. There was no news about you, and they wouldn't let me see you. I assumed that would go both ways.”

“Well, yes,” shrugs Khadgar, a bit reluctant. And Lothar knows exactly what he is saying, even though he does not. Khadgar is not quite monitored well enough to stop him. His abilities are beyond that of the people keeping him under wraps, and intelligence is easy to obtain for a man who seems to be able to plug his mind into the network without a digital footprint.

“This is a mess,” mutters he. “They have all these discussions about what it means to be human, and at what point someone like me would be an organism enough to be considered autonomous. But they just sit in their office and talk, and they never once ask me.”

Lothar pushes his mount and himself to the nearest slab of rock in the shallow stream. As soon as the gryphon throws itself onto the warm surface, Lothar finds himself pushed off, his space crowded, and he lands back in the water. “They are afraid,” he sighs with a last look at the petulant creature. “That's what people are when they don't know something. Whenever my unit would arrive on a new planet and we found life, we made sure to dominate it. Something about not being top of the food chain.”

“But I don't want to be above anyone.”

Lothar laughs. “Beautiful, there is no one who can exceed you.”

A silence falls. “Did you just—?”

“Hm.” His merriment is only fleeting. A second later, it might not ever have been there. “I wish to see you.”

“Soon.”

“Khadgar.”

But Khadgar smiles softly. “I've got friends here, too. The medical staff that looks after me is nice. Their interests are different. They don't lose a valuable asset if they can't control me, and so I have allowed them to research me.” Something rustles in the background. “They found undocumented inhibitors. Illegal ones, ones that were not accounted for in my files. And since they shouldn't be there, I am having them removed.”

“What does that mean?”

The man laughs. “I won't tell you that where everyone can hear it.”

Oh.

“Come back to the city,” says Khadgar. “They let me watch television sometimes, and it is good to see your face.”

Khadgar sounds better. Not quite his old self, and rather like he has been through a rough period and is finally recovering. But the Institute For The Preservation Of Species, the only institute that offered to harbour Khadgar and then passed all subsequent security checks, have treated him well. “Tell them thanks,” says Lothar. It is a poor way of expressing his gratitude. “I will see if I can make the early news tomorrow.”

The laugh he earns himself warms him. “Want me to see if I can make the evening news?”

“That is how we do this then?” muses Lothar. “We go public?”

Khadgar bristles. There is a voice in the background; he doesn't have much longer. “I call it fixing what misguided ideas they have made up about you.”

“There was always a chance they wouldn't approve,” says Lothar. None of the taboos on same-sex relationships remain in this society that has embraced all sorts of relationships. He has seen social constructs in the Gilded Rose that have reddened the tips of his ears. But artificial intelligence is sparse, and more often than not a fancy name for a neural network that never gets far enough to touch upon emotions. So it should not be surprising. To the people, Khadgar is about the breathing flesh-and-supercomputer equivalent of a sex doll. “Tomorrow,” Lothar affirms.

“Go now.”

Which is how their relationship evolves into a media frenzy.

* * *

Weeks before the last hearing, both Lothar's representative and that of the ASP call for an intervention.

“You're playing the people,” accuses the willowy lady in her mossy haute couture as she folds her hands on the other side of the large table in the board room. Gnarled horns grow from her jacket around her shoulders remarkably fashionably. She pays them no mind, although Lothar's eyes keep being drawn back to them.

“Yes,” he says.

She laughs nervously. “You don't deny it?”

Lothar's own representative unexpectedly turns on him. “You have to admit that doing so is highly unconventional. And please, Lothar, please remember that this is a hearing before an ethics board. Guerilla behaviour like this? That isn't going to do us any good.”

Lothar's eyes bore into the opposition. “You mean to say guerilla behaviour like drugging someone?”

“Hormone treatment is not drugging someone,” defends the antelope woman. “And he needed it, after you single-handedly shut him down.”

“About that.” Lothar is glad there is no chairman in the room. He has permission to speak freely today. His representative might not like the directness he applies; at the end of the day she is still the one who safeguards his interests. “I did not shut him down.”

“Excuse me, you—”

But Lothar's representative understands. And she grins. “Come to think of that, I have never seen conclusive evidence.”

“Because there is none,” says Lothar. Leaning forward against the table, he smirks. “But guess what his caretakers at the Institute have found, verified, and documented in detail? Remote access. Installed a week before Khadgar returned to Geneva. How is that for bending the rules?”

“You lie,” she says.

And Lothar can't prove it; the meeting is a surprise, and he does not have the documents. So when the woman next to him rolls her eyes, “I was going to keep this for the hearing,” and slides forward an old-fashioned folder, opening it on the right page for her, he doesn't know how many drinks would be acceptable to show her his gratitude. “You'll want to read the following twenty-one pages. Take it. Have your experts look at it. Make notes. I've got a copy at home.”

Now the woman with the horns pales. “Can we talk about this a week from now?” she asks. “I need—I need to study this.”

Lothar can ask for nothing else. He watches his green-skinned representative—he is getting used to her, and is almost fond of her stubborn steak—and then they both grin.

* * *

“Three days,” Khadgar reminds him.

He is twirling his finger around the cable, the feed from the Institute grainy while he lies in some sort of man-sized egg shape that fills up all of the screen. Draped with at least four bed covers, he calls it a bed. In his own time, Lothar would have dubbed that designer. But with Khadgar in it, content as he is with his wired phone that he requested because he has seen it on old footage once—never mind that Lothar has assured him several times that it is from before his time—it is rather a comfortable nest.

“Three days,” Lothar says. “How are you doing? Are you still feeling sick?”

Khadgar's face clouds over. “I threw up.”

“Oh, and—”

“Many times.” The image on screen shifts and Khadgar pulls up his shirt. Unperturbed, he manually brings the camera closer to what appear to be three stitched wounds. He sounds proud though. “I've got six more. They are healing up alright. By the time I'm out of here, you will probably no longer be able to see them.” If his makers did one thing right, it is enhancing his ability to heal. “They are giving me so many pills. Apparently that is called a cocktail. For hormone corrections,” and he is immediately quick to add, " _good_ corrections. To get the balance back to where it is supposed to be. For faster recovery too. Sometimes they give me sleeping pills to make sure I rest. I don't think I'd sleep for days if I didn't have those."

Lothar settles into an arm chair on the porch. Outside the boundaries of his small garden, the city is alive with the sounds of the night. He has considered putting up a sound wall. The beauty of the house however is that it has as little technology as he can manage—the portable screen is on Khadgar's insistence, and he is now quite glad to have given in to the many arguments to get one now.

Months have passed since the last hearing.

It has been a circus. Already having settled on an arrangement before the date, the third and last hearing has been a play enacted for the audience. As per the ASP's request, Lothar chose not to make public the extensive folder documenting all the things the Institute For The Preservation Of Species has found during their research. The statement from Khadgar's caretaker about his physical state upon entry compared to that a few weeks in was equally undisclosed. As was the first in-depth analysis of Khadgar's personality someone has done in years.

There has been one part, really, that Lothar's green representative did choose fit to disclose. She felt that it mattered, that it crossed bridges. Khadgar agreed.

Khadgar is biological enough to father children of his own.

And on hearing that statement in court, the case had been decided.

So Khadgar now has money. In theory, at least. He has years of back pay for all the hours he was given only food and lodgings; then there is the compensation for years of overtime. Combined with the amount that the ASP was fined for violating a couple of basic human rights, Khadgar would technically never have to work a day in his life again.

Off the record, he has agreed to let Lothar take him on one all-out holiday, before he donates all of what is left to the Institute. Since the last day of the hearing, after half a day of trivialities and bureaucracy, Khadgar has been officially recognised as an independent individual. And every picture taken of that moment shows him smiling from ear to ear with a healthy glow to his cheeks that has people talking for days.

Lothar remembers how Khadgar had glanced up at him. He had ducked his head, bitten the inside of his lip and allowed himself to be guided out of the building. He had lowered his eyes and pursed his lips, not quite able suppress how good it felt. Lothar had been no better.

That was when Lothar expected to take him home, and was told instead, “I am going to be away for a while.” Khadgar had tried not to let anyone hear it; sometimes he is still more naive about modern-day technology than Lothar is. “The Institute promised to take out some of the overrides. I didn't know I had them.”

No matter how frightening those overrides, Lothar's good mood had dampened. “Can I come see you?”

“I insist that you do,” Khadgar argued.

“How long?”

Those couple of months have at last slunk down to three days.

“Talk to me,” he asks as he leans back on the porch and closes his eyes.

“I am a free man,” says Khadgar. There is no less amazement in his voice tonight. “I think I'll miss the ASP, if I'm honest. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life now, and I think I won't get to see the people I used to work with for a long time.” He means, Lothar knows, the team who made him.

And he does sympathise. The old man is Khadgar's creative father. He has spent a lot of labour, money and years on creating him. Arguably, Khadgar might be more expensive than the wealth it would take to rebuild the capital from scratch. Though not biologically, he is undoubtedly his child.

But the man had been less than exemplary upon their exit from the court room. “You have no right to be with him,” the man had cursed at him. “He is young. He doesn't know how the world works. You used him.”

And there had been the heart of the matter for him. But it was Khadgar who had stopped in his steps. “I'm not a child,” he had said, loud enough for anyone to hear.

The throng had come to a halt. And the words became the first thing anyone would read in the news feeds for days to come. Somehow, that sentence grew into the perfect summary for the case. A parent who had been afraid to let go.

_I'm not a child._

“They will come around,” Lothar says. He has been a father. The day Callan decided to move out had been a rough blow on him. It is another lifetime, and despite how much he misses his family, he has made peace with losing them to time. Callan had been a father himself. A grandfather. His son had outgrown Lothar and done greater things than his father; he had lived a full life in the months when Lothar was asleep.

Khadgar yawns. His hair is sleep-tousled on the screen. It begs reaching out to mess it up further, before drawing the man in against him. “Maybe,” he says. “I am going to have a lot of free time. You have been there. What should I do with it?”

Lothar is not with his troops on their expedition right now. He occasionally tunes in and asks how things are going in the equatorial wilds or offers advice, and sometimes when his men need a boost in morale, he is glad to supply. He smiles as the star sky above his garden turns. He can almost see them move, different constellations the names of which he is still learning. Up there, somewhere, is the terminal where Khadgar used to work. He does not live there anymore. Lothar moves a leaf between his fingers. “I don't know.” A smile curls around his lips. “I've got two weeks off when you get back. I'm sure we can figure something out.”

“Only two weeks?” quips Khadgar. If Lothar is not mistaken, he senses a curious edge of nervousness, and he makes a note.

Lothar shrugs. “More is always negotiable.”

He receives a pleased sound in reply.

* * *

It is Lothar who ends up doing the negotiations.

Layers of crumpled white sheets tangle around them as Khadgar wraps his legs around his hips. The sea of cotton sinks them under in the last light of day, in a curved bed far from home. He is trembling. His fingers try to guide Lothar's mouth against his own, but he is distracted by the sensory overload from the physical attention that Lothar bestows upon him along his jaw and neck.

“Lothar,” he pleads. “I…”

Lothar pulls apart to behold his doing. Flushed lips and blown eyes stare back at him with a wildness that looks stunning on Khadgar. There is no measure to capture the extent of the devotion that wells up. Lothar's fingertips can feel the ridges of every new scar. When he traces them, he earns a shudder, but when Khadgar threatens to become self-conscious about them, Lothar makes sure to worship each one.

Except the ones lower on his stomach. Those Khadgar does not allow.

“Should I turn over?” he offers. Khadgar likes to sometimes take his time mapping his anatomy. He does so without preamble, tracing muscle and requesting Lothar to move his arm to see how tissue moves over bone with a fascination that is, for such a scientific curiosity, strangely intimate.

Again, there is that hint of something else. Every time when their hips touch by accident, Khadgar's breath is cut short. Inhibiting that part of him has been cruel, a decision that still seems to leave Khadgar unsure of what is now happening to his flustered body.

Khadgar nods, and Lothar falls into the sheets next to him. He longs for a lot, and is content to take nothing. Khadgar needs to explore his body on his own, something in which Lothar will offer assistance when he is asked and his patient inaction when not. Either way, the accusations are still fresh in his mind. He allows Khadgar to sit up and stare at him to the point where everything else falls away, and although he swallows, he holds down his hands when his lover finally allows himself to look at the most pressing matter between them.

“Is it normal?” he asks.

Lothar's tongue is dry. His Adam's apple bobs in his throat. “It happens when you're attracted to someone.”

“Nobody in the Institute liked to talk about it.” Khadgar is visibly conflicted. Not because of the sight, Lothar does not believe so. Assaulted with so many changes, Khadgar rather seems to war with understanding what is happening to his own body and his new responsiveness. Ways he has never had to control himself before. The damage of his upbringing runs deep.

“It's one of the few ways you can really hurt a person,” says Lothar. “You have to let down your guard. It is very personal.”

Khadgar settles for lying next to him. His kiss licks into Lothar's mouth, though their bodies barely touch. “I wouldn't hurt you.”

“But that is not what you're really worried about.”

“No.”

Lothar's eyes lazily droop shut. His fingertips find Khadgar's chin. He isn't in a hurry. Although his body burns for release, he will excuse himself later. “The first time I jumped,” he starts, “I didn't know what was happening to me. I was in a place half a light year away from home. I lost years on Earth. My body was paralysed and wouldn't listen to me. Then came the thawing. I didn't think it could get worse, but it did. I hated what followed the jump. Next time, I thought I was prepared. And the third time, and the fourth. It never passed. It is all right not to be perfect, Khadgar.”

It does not quite settle either of their minds. “I know.” Khadgar eyes flick down between them. He draws a shaky breath and burrows his face against Lothar's neck. He is pushing his bravery. “Maybe you shouldn't sneak off to the bathroom tonight.”

Lothar frowns and stills. “I don't expect anything from you.”

“Not me,” comes an elated laugh against his ear. A nip follows, one to appease him. Or perhaps to dispel the last remains of the tension. The worst, then, is behind Khadgar. The subject breached. “You. I mean, if that is acceptable to ask. But please tell me if it's not. I don't know half of how these things work, but I think,” he swallows a sound, “I think if I could see it, I could learn. Or at least understand.”

Lothar is astonished by what is asked.

Half wondering if Khadgar is aware of his request, he thinks about it. He doesn't assume—but no, it holds an appeal. Lothar moves his hand between them. He pushes the last article of clothing off him and waits for Khadgar to either run or to get used to that, first.

The initial seconds in which he touches himself are awkward and self-aware, and far too focused on what his lover thinks of him.

Lothar's inhibitions are stubborn. This time it is he whose breath is unsteady as Khadgar finds his gaze. Curiosity is the first emotion to dominate their contact, as Khadgar analyses what is happening with ten questions on his tongue at any moment. “How—” he starts, and breaks it off as soon as he realises his distraction. “Sorry.”

Lothar laughs breathlessly. “If you have any questions, save them for later.”

“Like in a seminar,” Khadgar connects the dots. He earns himself a grin before a hand scrambles to cover his mouth.

“Don't talk.”

The man hastily nods. He settles back next to him, at enough of a distance to see as much as he wants to see. Lothar keeps his eyes trained on the way his lips part and close, the fluttering of his dark eyes even as Khadgar doesn't bother hiding that he wants to see everything that goes on. Lothar's thumb idly strokes his cheek as he works.

Lothar shuts his eyes to finally allow himself the surrender. And so he is startled when a soft wetness envelops his thumb.

Khadgar is looking at him intently. “Not good?” breathes he.

" _Good,_ " is all Lothar has the power to say in return.

He doesn't close his eyes again for the remainder of it. The boy amazes him still, the way he is only just starting to understand his sexuality and yet does things that take guts. There are times when Lothar fears that there will come a day when Khadgar has learned all he can from him and moves onto other people, other subjects to stretch his experience. He is first and foremost a scholar; everything he does, he does with the intent to learn. But to think so would discredit all that Khadgar feels for him. Lothar does not quite grasp at the extent of that. In honesty, he doesn't think Khadgar himself knows. They have yet to put a label on it. But he considers him his partner.

When he finally comes, Khadgar is equally breathless, and on top of him in a second. His knees sinking into the sheets on both sides of Lothar's waist, he kisses him like he only has this one moment. He doesn't for that matter care that in doing so, he smears the evidence of Lothar's orgasm against his inner thigh. “I want,” he says hotly, and doesn't finish his sentence. “That was incredible. How does it feel?”

“Amazing,” grins Lothar up at him. Languidness stretches into his limbs.

“How amazing?” Khadgar insists, asking for something tangible, some comparison that will help him understand.

And Lothar does not have it. He could call it euphoria. Perhaps he could find the specific hormones that play a part in the glow that he feels now. None of those concepts would truly do the feeling justice. “Try it yourself,” he says as his hand traces the human stain on Khadgar's no longer immaculate skin. “Or, when you are ready, I will show you.”

Khadgar does not bother to hide the fact that right now, he is willing to do anything.

It is just that Lothar is not. He draws a peck to satiate his thirst. “I am going to take a shower,” he says. “Then, I am going to go outside. Turn the lights off, and I will not enter this room until you switch them back on.”

His body is alive as he pushes himself up to his knees. Reclining before him is the brightest star in his universe. It has only just been formed, a protostar barely scraping at all its immeasurable potential. Lothar has seen nebula clusters and the ruins of a supernova, and one day, if he has the chance, he will take Khadgar to see all those places, if only to see how strongly the wonder in his eyes will outshine them.

Possibly, it is exactly what Khadgar thinks of him at that moment.

Perhaps, as he reaches over to pick up the clothing that got lost between the sheets and chooses not to put any of them on as he walks away, Khadgar's thoughts may be a little less pure than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Like its first part, The Human Emotion, this one too was heavily inspired by the movies Ex Machina and Interstellar, as well as Joe Haldeman's book The Forever War. 
> 
> There are plans for a third, last part to finish up the series. Many plans, and likely to range into uncharted, physical territory. Because reasons. Either way, I hope you liked this one, and if you're going to be waiting out for the next one, you are amazing.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
